The bottom of the bag is lined with the crumbs from a thousand sandwiches before. She’ll say she’s cleaning it out, if he emerges.

If there is something suspicious in this bag then she is not mad but – but then what? She’s psychic? Now that is a delusion.

She continues digging. Todd is as messy as she is and screwed up pieces of paper and discarded leaflets cut at the skin on her hands as she frantically digs.

And what’s this? Right in the back? A sheath, a leather sheaf. It’s as cold and hard as a thigh bone, sitting right there against the back of her son’s rucksack. She knows what it will be before she pulls it out.

She breathes deeply, steeling herself, trying to calm down, then pulls at the sheaf, unbuttoning the top and sliding the handle out.

And – inside it … a knife. The knife.

She stands there, staring at it, at this betrayal in her hand. She hasn’t thought what she would do if she found something. There is no way she can just leave it there. She can’t take the risk that it was a weird dream, that it was nothing.

She’s got to take it. Right?

She wrenches open the under-stairs cupboard. Shoes and sports equipment crowd out and she fumbles with them, pushing the knife right to the back where it sits like a spectre. She can hear Todd on the stairs. She leans the knife against the back wall and retreats out of the cupboard.

Todd – wet hair, red cheeks, oblivious – picks up his bag. She watches him carefully, to see if he notices the difference, the lightness, but he doesn’t seem to.

‘I found a knife in Todd’s bag,’ Jen says, presenting it to her husband the second he arrives home that afternoon.

Kelly stands there in front of her, the knife held across his hands like some archaeological find, inspecting it.

‘I didn’t ask him about it,’ she says. ‘I just took it.’

Kelly nods, staring down at it, not saying anything. Jen remembers his heartbroken face from last night – no, from the night that didn’t happen – and thinks she sees a milder version of it here, too. Kelly is a lover, not a fighter, one of life’s romantics: he said on their first date, when he asked her question after question, that he thought they were going to be together forever.

And he’d been right. They’d made it. The whole way. Twenty years married, seasoned liberally – so liberally – with jokes, sex, laughter. Jen’s eyes feel wet as she thinks about it, as she thinks about that fucking email from fucking Nicola Williams.

‘It’s brand new,’ Kelly says, flicking those eyes to her.

‘I know.’

‘Unused.’

Jen laughs, a hard, unhumorous laugh. ‘Right.’

‘What?’

‘The thing is.’ She licks her lips.

‘What did you mean earlier. On the phone?’ Kelly says, soft Welsh accent spiking the consonants. She has always loved that accent.